From: Ali Abunimah
To: morning@npr.org
Subject: NPR's partial reporting of Israeli violence

August 20, 2001

Dear NPR News,

Your coverage of the violence of Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians continues to be cursory, inconsistent and wholly inadequate in comparison to violence affecting Israelis.

On Morning Edition today, host Melissa Block and reporter Jennifer Ludden discussed this past weekend's violence in which six Palestinians were killed, three of them children. It is good to have Ludden back after her break. She is an excellent reporter, but in the context of NPR's ongoing failures, she fell short this morning.

If you review the transcript, you will find that Ludden's description of the violence focussed on the disputed circumstances of a bombing in Gaza in which a Palestinian man, 32 year-old Samir Abu El Az, his five year-old daughter and his seven year-old son were killed. Israel denies responsibility for what appears to be yet another extrajudicial execution, even though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon specifically told Israelis early in his term that while it would be Israel's policy to murder Palestinians, it would also be the policy sometimes to boast about it and sometimes to deny it completely.

Ludden also reportedthat a Palestinian man was shot dead by occupation troops, apparently while trying to circumvent an occupation roadblock, while on his way home with schoolbooks for his children. All of this was good, but it lacked the kinds of humanizing details, names and other information which Linda Gradstein meticulously provides about Israelis.

And Ludden simply made no mention at all of 13-year old Muhammad Al-Arar who was shot dead by occupation troops on Sunday with a live bullet to the chest in the occupied Gaza strip. Al-Arar was said to be throwing stones at tanks of the occupation forces (stones, of course--especially the Palestinian kind--are known to be more lethal to an Israeli tank than even the most advanced American anti-tank missiles).

Robert Fisk also reports that three other children--two Palestinian and one Israeli were injured--events which Ludden failed to mention:

"Two Palestinian babies - aged three and six months old - were seriously wounded by Israeli troops; the younger was shot in the head when the car in which he was travelling came under Israeli fire near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip while the older child was hit in the abdomen when Israeli soldiers fired at a vehicle trying to bypass a checkpoint. A two-year-old Israeli girl was also hit by gunfire - almost certainly Palestinian - during an attack on a bus in north Jerusalem." (The Independent, August 20, 2001)

Finally this morning, the occupation forces carried out another massive demolition in occupied east Jerusalem, destroying a nursery school and two apartment blocks. The French news agency reports:

"Around 30 troops sealed off the area in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood as bulldozers levelled two four-storey buildings and the school which were under construction, an AFP reporter on the scene said. The owner of the complex, Ibrahim Jolani, said the property had been worth 250,000 dollars." (Israeli bulldozers smash Palestinian homes, nursery school, August 20, 2001)

Ludden did not report this either, although she continued to mention continued "Palestinian attacks" as the Israelis call them.

So this is what we did not get this morning. What we did get after Ludden's talk with the host was a lengthy report from Linda Gradstein about how despite ten-months of violence Russians are still emigrating to Israel in large numbers. This report included an update on two girls (Linda gave their names), recovering from the June 1 bomb attack in Tel Aviv which killed 21 Israelis, many of them Russians. This report was the perfect example of the kind of detailed focus on the personal stories of Israelis that is much more rarely the case for Palestinians.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org